Like my old law school roomie who left “Gone With the Wind” at the intermission thinking it was over, I almost posted on this ethics mess too early. There were three acts, and there might be a fourth. I thought the ethics show was over after Act II.
Act I. The news media’s tantrum: Upon finding that Elon Musk and DOGE were serious about uncovering government waste, that he was employing some of his young computer nerds from SpaceX to do it, and that they had brought down USAID, a foreign aid, woke slush fund icon by exposing just how profligate and irresponsible it was, Katherine Long, a progressive reporter on the Wall Street Journal, targeted the young geniuses who may all be on the autistic spectrum (like Musk). One of them, a 19-year-old, she embarrassed by revealing that his social media handle when he was in high school was “Big Balls.” She also doxxed Marko Elez, writing that he was a “25-year-old who is part of a cadre of Elon Musk lieutenants deployed by the Department of Government Efficiency to scrutinize federal spending” and had published troubling social media posts like, “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.” “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” he wrote on “Twitter/X” in September. Long revealed that his account declared, “Normalize Indian hate,” in the same month, expressing his disapproval of the large numbers of tech workers from India in Silicon Valley.
Ethics takeaway: Doxxing is unethical; so is using old social media posts to make a newly prominent figure a victim of the “cancel culture.”
ACT II. Elez resigned in shame and disgrace, though Musk’s ire was directed at his doxxer, tweeting,
Ethics takeaway: Elez had to resign. Like the reasoning behind the Naked Teacher Principle, if your old social media comments embarrass your employer and undermine your work, it doesn’t matter how they become public. Once they do become public, you own them, you’re accountable for them, and you cannot complain if and when you suffer the consequences.
Thus I agreed with the resignation. Elez should have revealed to Musk or his supervisors that he had posted such garbage before he was exposed to the partisan microscope and the politics of personal destruction. Musk has a target on his back now more than ever: heck, the Axis spent a week claiming that he gave a Nazi salute, and one of the perpetual Big Lies used against Donald Trump is that he supports white supremacists (after all, he said that they were “fine people,” didn’t he?). The ambitious Trump to-do list is always going to be at risk of failing because of some coordinated Axis effort to turn public opinion against him: it gores too many progressive oxen. The administration can’t risk being derailed by stupid distractions like this. Yes, tough luck for Elez, but if he were as brilliant as he’s supposed to be, he should have know better than to post idiocy like that.
I almost made the drama, which I assumed was over, an Ethics Quiz. And Katherine Long is a disgusting person, especially her attack on one of Musk’s wunderkind for juvenile social media conduct like calling himself, “Big Balls”.
Then the next act began…
ACT III. Vice-President J.D. Vance, whose wife is one of those Indians that Elez said should be hated, intervened to rescue him. “Here’s my view: I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Vance said in a Friday post on X. “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back. If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.” It was a gutsy, savvy move by Vance, and makes it clear that no Kamala Harris (or Mike Pence) he. In one tweet he attacked cancel culture, demonstrated the ethical values of compassion, forgiveness, and fairness, and gave both Elez and Musk a reprieve while condemning the ugly practice of doxxing. Musk immediately responded, “He will be brought back. To err is human, to forgive divine,” Musk wrote on X.
Like most of the startling events during Trump’s first two weeks, this ended up as a net win for Trump, as well as Vance and Musk.
Unless there is an Act IV….
Ethics Alarms 
Does this satisfy the Act IV requirements?
https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887958058342502623
OOF! That’s Gonna Leave a Mark: J.D. Vance BURIES Ro Khanna in Heated Exchange About ‘Racism’
https://twitchy.com/grateful-calvin/2025/02/08/oof-thats-gonna-leave-a-mark-jd-vance-buries-ro-khanna-in-heated-exchange-about-racism-n2408028
That is worthy of the “Exchange Hall of Fame”. JD Vance does not suffer fools…at all!!
On all the anti-DOGE reporting. This hysteria that Elon Musk’s nerds are going into the Treasury Department to steal everyone’s social security numbers and divert all the United States’ treasure into Elon Musk’s personal account needs to stop. Who made this kind of stuff up? Who believes it? They’re doing audits. They’re not changing code. Presumably, they have no more that “read only” access to the various programs. Are these hysterics really objecting to auditors having access to what government employees are doing on the job? Doesn’t democracy die in darkness? Grrr.
Oh Christ. Here we go. Democrat state AGs pounce and federal judges dance to their tune.
Althouse: “A federal judge early Saturday temporarily restricted access by Elon Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems…”
She quotes a NYT article. I guess I lost the link but it’s her top story today.
Unscrupulous overspending politicians don’t want any kind of audits of what the government is doing because then the public will find out what the government has been doing and unscrupulous overspending politicians know that that will be BIG trouble for them in the long run.
There are unscrupulous politicians on both sides of the political aisle and the engrained spending corruption in the government bureaucracy is there and both sides of the political aisle are to blame for it, period.
At this particular moment in history, it just so happens to be the Republicans that are diving into the government bureaucracy to audit the spending and cut ridiculous government waste and they are going to intentionally reveal the truth to “we the people”. This is a really good thing! The problem is that since it’s the Republicans are the ones delving into the waste and the Democrats are the ones fighting the Republican’s efforts, it makes it appear that the Democrats are the wasteful spenders and the Republicans are the ones with common sense, when the whole truth is both parties have been the wasteful spenders and it’s taking an independent minded DC outsider to say “ENOUGH!”
President Trump’s efforts to cut ridiculous wasteful government spending is a very admirable thing to do, just don’t be sucked into believing that it’s only the Democrats that created this spending mess.
Steve, I don’t find this standard issue “a pox on both their houses” helpful. There’s waste from all sorts of congress people. So what? I don’t care if it’s driven by Dems or Republicans. Let’s just find it and get it dealt with. Quite frankly, Trump isn’t a Republican and neither is Musk. And if Tesla and SpaceX get whacked as a result of what’s revealed, fine.
Old Bill wrote, “I don’t find this standard issue “a pox on both their houses” helpful.”
Helpful is a matter of opinion, but you helped to demonstrate that it’s truth.
Old Bill wrote, “I don’t care if it’s driven by Dems or Republicans. Let’s just find it and get it dealt with.”
I completely agree.
Old Bill wrote, “Trump isn’t a Republican”
I completely agree, and I’ve been saying that since 2015. I’m not too sure about Musk yet.
Old Bill wrote, “And if Tesla and SpaceX get whacked as a result of what’s revealed, fine.”
I think SpaceX will come out of this unscathed for the most part, Tesla will not. I think Tesla and the entire electric vehicle industry has been heavily subsidized and it needs to stop.
For the most part, we are in agreement, we just slightly disagree on what’s considered “helpful”. 😉
Right, Steve. I just find the pox/houses thing a discussion stopper used usually by the guilty party that wants the discussion stopped for their protection. I guess it’s not a rationalization, just a rhetorical dodge on the level of “I know you are, but what am I?” It’s one of my hobby horses, I suppose.
Best,
Bill
To the contrary, I find highlighting problems on both sides of the aisle to be a useful discussion-starter, because it’s a transition point to talking about what instead of who–policies instead of parties. The public can’t hold people accountable until they can describe what they like and dislike in functional building-block terms. Getting stuck on party labels is what stalls discussions in my experience, because it glosses over why people disagree on which party is preferable to the other. Does that make sense?
Wasn’t it Elizabeth Warren the one screeching at Hegseth about poor financial management and never “doing”an audit
Regarding any of Musk’s workers past comments: If diversity of thought and experience makes us better why are some thoughts and experiences unworthy?
Because, Chris, (cue the Sainted Barack of Obama, “It’s time to have a conversation. It’s a teachable moment.” It’s analogous to the NBA being “diverse” because it’s almost all black guys.
I think that if you state that the sole criterion for employment is for an employee to be expert in their job function, and on that basis you root out all the DEI stuff as irrelevant damaging distraction, then you can’t then fire the world’s second best database analysis guy for some ugly internet postings that are not relevant to the job.